I've had a drive fail, I have 6 drives + parity. The missing drive is now replaced, but the UI thinks all its files have been deleted. I right clicked the drive, selected undelete files. There were 20,000 protected files on the drive, and the undelete dialog has frozen for 2.5 hours so far. Wondering if this is normal, and whether there is a better way of recovering a drive?
disParity » General Discussion
Recover lost drive.
(10 posts)-
Posted 2 years ago #
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If you replaced one of your data drives with a new empty drive, which is what it sounds like you did, then yes disParity is going to think all of the files on that drive are now deleted.
Normally to recover an entire lost drive, you use the "Recover" option from the right-click menu, not "Undelete". Undelete is intended only to recover a relatively small set of deleted files from a otherwise healthy data drive. You could in theory use it to recover an entire drive of 20,000 files, but it's not designed for that and will definitely not be fast.
If the dialog is still frozen, my advice would be to kill disParity from the Task Manager, restart, then right-click on the drive and choose Recover instead of Undelete.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Ok, thanks, that did it. Recovering now. Undelete was running for 7 hours still using 100% CPU. I'll know what to do in future, but it was not obvious initially. Perhaps worth providing a distinction between the two in the UI? Or maybe a progress indication (with cancel) when the undelete dialog is thinking.?
Posted 2 years ago # -
Yes, good suggestions, I'll try to come up with a better solution. It's so interesting when designing user interfaces, things that you think are very obvious turn out not to be, and vice versa. Very challenging!
Posted 2 years ago # -
Any word on how that recover went? Were you able to recover the whole drive?
Posted 2 years ago # -
Thanks, yes all recovered! Took a few days, but all data (1 TB, 20k files) have been restored. Very pleased :-)
Re: Recover / Undelete : If a drive is there, but 99% of its protected files are missing, perhaps a "(!) Recover This Drive" message / icon may be logical?
I'm a s/w dev myself, and I know how the dev's impression of suitable UI and the user's can be very different :-)
Overall though. AWESOME program. Hope you get around to streamlining the UI, improving the features and eventually make some $$ out of this product. It's CERTAINLY a great commercial prospect. I'd be happy to pay for it now that I can appreciate it's capabilities.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I'm thrilled to hear you were able to recover the whole drive. That's great news!
I need to think a little bit more about this specific case. Normally if a drive has failed, I just assumed someone would put a new drive in the system at a different drive letter and then recover the old to the new. I don't know why I assumed that. For some reason it never occurred to me that you would take the old drive out and put a new empty drive in at the same drive letter, causing disParity to just think that all the files have been deleted, creating a somewhat confusing user experience. It's so obvious and yet I never thought of it. At the very least, I need to put a cap on the max. number of files that can be undeleted from the "Undelete" command, to keep that dialog from freezing up.
I currently don't have any plans to make disParity a commercial product. Anything is possible, of course, but as you say, it would require a lot more polish and features first. It's a hobby for me and I make enough money from my day job. :) Maybe some day my circumstances will change and I will try to commercialize it, but for now it remains a labor of love.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I have had drives fail in the past and I always replace them with a new drive at the same letter - that way any shortcuts still work.
That is what is great about getting input from users - what you never thought about is obvious to others and vice versa. :)
Posted 2 years ago # -
Seems like you could find a way to have disParity recognize the case where if a drive 'suddenly' becomes empty but still remains accessible and healthy, it might just be a replaced drive, and ask if they would like to restore to that location.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I think that does make sense and would be pretty straight forward to implement. I plan to add that feature at some point soon.
Posted 2 years ago #
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